Upcoming PVE Mission Points Change

Unknown

mohio wrote:

I'm gonna get a little math-y in here. Basically just to say, calm down you guys, play when you want within your 8 hour window and don't worry so much (until the last 8 hours then prepare to go nuts). Here goes:

One additional recent "stealth" change besides the 3 hour refresh trial, is that there is an additional stack on each node. So now each stack will only take off 16.67% (1/6th) of the total points. For an 8 hour refresh, that is barely more than 2% an hour. So, have to go to bed 5 hours after your last clear? Well, clear it again and you still get 94% of max value. Sure it's not ideal, and lots of people WILL stay up or set alarms and get right at 100% for each clear up until the end. But you know what? Even if it's a 48 hour sub and you did your 6 full "normal" clears (at 0, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40 hours) for *only* 575% of full points, you can still make that up just by doing a little extra at the end. It's all coming down to how much people can do at the end anyway, so being slightly behind going into it is surely unfortunate, but is no insurmountable challenge. Most people will still not budget enough time to do more than 2 clears, but that 3rd clear is still worth 67% of a full clear, and the 4th is worth 50%.

tl;dr - doesn't matter if you clear optimally or not, it's going to come down to the last 2-3 hours and who gets in that 3rd-4th-5th clear vs the guys that only have an hour and a half or so to play and will do as much as they can in that shorter amount of time.

Only you doesnt understand the situation, Dev team also. If there are No placement rewards and progession rewards get improve well. Thats great

However the best rewards is still placement rewards! So we are competive the placement rewards. So how long the refresh timer do nothing. with different time slice different end time, player still request to calculate what time to play. As the cap is 8hrs there are very possible we need to wake up at 3 - 5 am to play.... this does nothing

Unknown

Unless either they forgot to increase scaling to compensate for the less clears or that people start buying health pack in huge numbers, there's absolutely no way you're doing say 4 clears of every node rated hard or even normal (a lot of the mid 200s are rated normal for me) in the last 2 hours. Most of those nodes take at least 5 minutes to beat even with the best offensive team and much longer if you wimp out with heavier support and of course there isn't even any guaranteed you're beating them in the first place let alone repeatedly. You will flat out lose to someone who in the last 8 hours spread out 4 clears if you're operating only on the last 2-3 hours. Even if you have an hour average over someone else due to fancy timing that gets you 1/8 * (1/6) = ~2% advantage per node, which is pretty much meaningless when you consider the 4th stack of a node is still worth 50% of the base points (1, 5/6, 4/6, 3/6), so there's no way your extra 2% per clear can possibly make up for someone with 50% more base points by doing an extra clear.

JVReal

Phantron wrote:

Unless either they forgot to increase scaling to compensate for the less clears or that people start buying health pack in huge numbers, there's absolutely no way you're doing say 4 clears of every node rated hard or even normal (a lot of the mid 200s are rated normal for me) in the last 2 hours. Most of those nodes take at least 5 minutes to beat even with the best offensive team and much longer if you wimp out with heavier support and of course there isn't even any guaranteed you're beating them in the first place let alone repeatedly. You will flat out lose to someone who in the last 8 hours spread out 4 clears if you're operating only on the last 2-3 hours. Even if you have an hour average over someone else due to fancy timing that gets you 1/8 * (1/6) = ~2% advantage per node, which is pretty much meaningless when you consider the 4th stack of a node is still worth 50% of the base points (1, 5/6, 4/6, 3/6), so there's no way your extra 2% per clear can possibly make up for someone with 50% more base points by doing an extra clear.

At what point does the stacking refresh? When the nodes get to a full refresh? If every time you double up a node you extend it by 8 hours, after going through them 4 times, you have to wait for 32 hours to get back to base. On a 24 or 36 hour node, that's never or at the very end. That 8 hour penalty could possibly linger through the whole event. If you did all 6 stacks at the start or during that first 8 hour window, you wouldn't be able to play the rest of the event due to the penalty in force. Am I understanding this right?
With a 3 hour, if you doubled up for sleep, you'd be at a full refresh when you woke up in the morning. When you double up an 8 hour, you're 2/3 of a day away from an optimal refresh.
What would the points look like if a full sweep was 5,000 points base, and I played every 6 hours?

simonsez

mohio wrote:

tl;dr - doesn't matter if you clear optimally or not, it's going to come down to the last 2-3 hours and who gets in that 3rd-4th-5th clear

And this is my big problem with this whole thing. Who are the people who are going to be able to go 5 deep on their final grind? Hint: it's not the people who aren't buying rainbow boosts and health packs. I have a hard time believing that everyone celebrating this change wants the game to be more P2W, but that's exactly what you've got now.

Unknown

I'm not sure why people who play so much don't feel any issue at being told not to play for 8 hours.
Don't we have the same issue in PVP now? Now, you're being told "YOU CAN'T PLAY for 8 hours," unless you spend absurd HP, and even then you can only get one or two more matches in. PVP is way more boring now because people are forced not to play. There are much fewer good targets in the last day, especially the last 3 hours.
Why is this different in PVE? Is it because of the same nodes? At least there's more variety than fighting X-Force over and over.

Since more people can optimize at 8 hour refreshes, the dulled competition will create more people in the final running with 8 hours to go, except in events like simulator where scaling is the differentiator.

simonsez wrote:

Who are the people who are going to be able to go 5 deep on their final grind? Hint: it's not the people who aren't buying rainbow boosts and health packs. I have a hard time believing that everyone celebrating this change wants the game to be more P2W, but that's exactly what you've got now.

Doesn't 8 hours for the final grind allow people to strategize more as opposed to having 3 hours where you're almost guaranteed to need health packs? Seems less P2W.

I_am_Zero

JVReal wrote:

If you did all 6 stacks at the start or during that first 8 hour window, you wouldn't be able to play the rest of the event due to the penalty in force. Am I understanding this right?

That's not entirely true. You can keep grinding that 1 point as many times as you like. But why would you purposely ignore the countdown timer and do all six clears at the beginning of the sub? Because you can? You could do the same with 3 hour refreshes.

Also, why are you complaining about optimal play when you don't play optimally to begin with? Why are you raging so hard at this change? It's a test run, 1 event, no new characters. If you don't like it, don't play. Or better yet, keep playing sub-optimally to mess with one of their data points.

I'm glad they are testing this. Who knows, maybe I'll hate it as well, but, for me, it's better than the current situation where I can't play for 1/2 a day and everyone else in my bracket is passing me by while they play every 3 hours. I know I'll never be in the top 10 with the current set up (and a hard time at top 25/50), but with this change, at least I now have a shot.

simonsez

daibar wrote:

Doesn't 8 hours for the final grind allow people to strategize more

There's no strategy to a grind. You just play as much as you can. And when you make the grind longer, aside from the natural health drain, you also increase the likelihood of really bad things happening (ie total wipes).

You also aren't considering that when someone is hitting the nodes every 2.5 hours, they're alleviating the pressure of their final grind. Ie, no health packs required at all. But when everyone can hit the nodes once every 8 hours, the final grind pressure will be far greater. Hell, I've got 8 hours to go in Oscorp, and I could stop now and still get top 10. That will never happen with an 8 hour refresh. I'd be in a score cluster with 6 dozen other people, and the top ranks will go to whoever buys enough health packs to keep their final grind going as long as possible.

Trisul

Expect alliance competition to intensify, just like when all alliances were given 20 slots. More players will be able to hit the optimal clears, making it that much more important to join the right bracket.

Trisul

simonsez wrote:

... top ranks will go to whoever buys enough health packs to keep their final grind going as long as possible.

Cash grab!

Unknown

I am Zero wrote:

Why are you complaining about optimal play when you don't play optimally to begin with? Why are you raging so hard at this change? It's a test run, 1 event, no new characters. If you don't like it, don't play. Or better yet, keep playing sub-optimally to mess with one of their data points.

I don't get why it's so hard to understand that some people like playing this game more than every 8 hours, but don't want to intentionally lose.

simonsez wrote:

daibar wrote:

Doesn't 8 hours for the final grind allow people to strategize more

There's no strategy to a grind. You just play as much as you can. And when you make the grind longer, aside from the natural health drain, you also increase the likelihood of really bad things happening (ie total wipes).

You also aren't considering that when someone is hitting the nodes every 2.5 hours, they're alleviating the pressure of their final grind. Ie, no health packs required at all. But when everyone can hit the nodes once every 8 hours, the final grind pressure will be far greater. Hell, I've got 8 hours to go in Oscorp, and I could stop now and still get top 10. That will never happen with an 8 hour refresh. I'd be in a score cluster with 6 dozen other people, and the top ranks will go to whoever buys enough health packs to keep their final grind going as long as possible.

The choice of characters you use can make a huge difference, eg quick finish, but more self-damage, etc... Perhaps you can even use an otherwise useless team to clear a node, saving health from your main team. With 8 hours, There's more than enough time for some characters to regenerate.
I agree with the final grind being more hellish as so many people will feel that they are in contention.

JVReal

I am Zero wrote:

JVReal wrote:

If you did all 6 stacks at the start or during that first 8 hour window, you wouldn't be able to play the rest of the event due to the penalty in force. Am I understanding this right?

That's not entirely true. You can keep grinding that 1 point as many times as you like. But why would you purposely ignore the countdown timer and do all six clears at the beginning of the sub? Because you can? You could do the same with 3 hour refreshes.

Also, why are you complaining about optimal play when you don't play optimally to begin with? Why are you raging so hard at this change? It's a test run, 1 event, no new characters. If you don't like it, don't play. Or better yet, keep playing sub-optimally to mess with one of their data points.

I'm glad they are testing this. Who knows, maybe I'll hate it as well, but, for me, it's better than the current situation where I can't play for 1/2 a day and everyone else in my bracket is passing me by while they play every 3 hours. I know I'll never be in the top 10 with the current set up (and a hard time at top 25/50), but with this change, at least I now have a shot.

Your definition of optimal and my definition of optimal aren't the same. I define optimal by my life schedule, and points for playing. If I can wake up and clear before work, clear during lunch, and clear when I get home, then clear 3 hours later for full points, then a couple clears before bed for reduced points, and be able to do a full clear in the morning before work for full points again... that's optimal for me. The game is available to play for full points exactly when i want it to be.

Living my life by a 2.5 or 3 hour clear exactly on the clear time, that is not optimal to my life... neither is playing for full points once and every time I can play I'm being shown that I cannot in fact play for full points or without being penalized another 8 hours. A mobile phone game that actually deters you from playing casually is not going to be a successful phone game.

I'm "raging so hard" because in my opinion it is an illogical change that steps into the bounds of dictating to me when I can and can't play by penalizing me for it instead of being available to play when I want to without penalty. I was having fun, this change takes the fun out of it. Isn't that what games are intended to provide? Entertainment, fun, something to waste your spare time on? A distraction, a hobby?

When a phone game is no longer fun, you stop playing it. I already get no joy out of PVP as a transitioning player, I hit my 300 points for a token and leave, my joy comes from hoping I get a 3* cover with it. PVE was the only real fun left. Take that away, and I have no reason to play. Not that I don't want to play... I truly want to play and have fun, but when a game goes so far out of its way to deter you from playing, taking the fun away because people want to treat it so seriously that they can't live their life because the game "tells" them they "have" to play every 2.5 or 3 hours... well, what can you say.

Hopefully it doesn't work out and 8 hour refreshes never show up again. Otherwise I will end up not playing anymore because of the frustration. Life is full of enough frustration just living it from things you can't control, why willfully introduce more into it?

Sorry if I come off as offensive to anyone that agrees with 8 hour refreshes. I just have a thing about being told when I can and can't play, and when someone tries to dictate to me how I will be allowed to spend my free time, I take it very personally.

Trisul

I'm glad you can still enjoy the grind. Me, I don't enjoy it as much and will be happier contributing to my alliance without playing so much per day.

orbitalint

So, I'm just diving into this thread but have they clarified if they will be looking at the stacks at all on nodes as well? I think 8 hours could be a good test run but maybe only 3 or 4 stacks makes sense in an 8 hour refresh environment. Possibly balances time invested to a sub/event with the end of event scurry that will likely determine who places where.

I agree with other posters that if it is the same with 5 stacks, it could easily make everything a toss up until the very end and depend more on number of clears you can do than anything else. Optimal play might matter very little, which I would find unfortunate for those that are putting that kind of time into the game.

I hope they are thinking about this kind of stuff when testing...

Unknown

The other issue with mission points and grindy-ness is that the award band is so tiny at the top that people feel compelled to grind for an excessively limited release of the first cover of 3 colors - broadening this band ALOT would not be a bad thing as all these people still need the other 10 covers and if they desired would be able to purchase some of any of the three colors now.

To give out 1 color of the cover to 1% of the players is really really little considering you still need 2-4 more of that color to reach potential anyhow. Please consider expanding the 3* covers - especially since we're already moving into the 4* transition

Unknown

JVReal wrote:

At what point does the stacking refresh? When the nodes get to a full refresh? If every time you double up a node you extend it by 8 hours, after going through them 4 times, you have to wait for 32 hours to get back to base. On a 24 or 36 hour node, that's never or at the very end. That 8 hour penalty could possibly linger through the whole event. If you did all 6 stacks at the start or during that first 8 hour window, you wouldn't be able to play the rest of the event due to the penalty in force. Am I understanding this right?
With a 3 hour, if you doubled up for sleep, you'd be at a full refresh when you woke up in the morning. When you double up an 8 hour, you're 2/3 of a day away from an optimal refresh.
What would the points look like if a full sweep was 5,000 points base, and I played every 6 hours?

Unless the rules are changing the stacks are still refreshed continously like before. To illustrate assume there is exactly one node worth 6000 points in the entire event.

Scenario 1: You play that node 4 times immediately with 8 hour left and nothing else. This gets you 6000 + 5000 + 4000 + 3000 = 18000 points.

Scenario 2: You play the node once with 8 hour left and then 2 more times at time = 0s left. This gets you 6000 + 6000 + 5000 = 17000 points.

Yes there's rubberband but it's very weak nowadays, and of course the guy in the first scenario is playing unrealistically non-optimal while the second scenario is unbelievably optimal (that guy finished all his nodes in the last second of the event!). If you can get an extra clear in, you'll almost always win assuming you started out effectively tied, and as long as the nodes remain heavily scaled, you simply can't count on being able to do these nodes more than twice in a block of time even while boosted.

Now an interesting question Simonsez brought up is that would the expected value of rainbow boosts in such an environment make you want to use rainbow boost on every game? The answer is it depends on what everyone else is doing. If no one else thoguht of this idea then of course it's worth it because rainbow boosts at 30 HP per game is still considerably less expensive than 150 HP on 3 health packs and they will give you a lot more mileage. However this only works until other people figured out the same thing. At that point you're paying 30 HP per match with no guaranteed it'll help and the cost is now much higher because there's a chance of failure. It'll be more of trying to guess what the rest of your bracket is doing because the strategy everyone is doing just won't work unless you're already the top player, and in that case you don't really need the extra edge to begin with.

I_am_Zero

daibar wrote:

I don't get why it's so hard to understand that some people like playing this game more than every 8 hours, but don't want to intentionally lose.

I get it. Some people like being told that they have to play a mobile game every 3 hours to get the best prizes. Some people don't mind setting an alarm that wakes them up at 3a and 6a. Some people have awesome jobs that allow them to not work for 30-45 minutes every 3 hours because they want to play a game. And some people don't like any of that. So this is a test to see if longer refreshes help or hurt the game. 1 pve is not going to ruin your life, is it?

JVReal wrote:

Your definition of optimal and my definition of optimal aren't the same. I define optimal by my life schedule, and points for playing.

It's not my definition, it's d3's. They made refreshes every 3 hours, so optimal play is to hit each node every 3 hours. Any other play is sub-optimal. By trying to change what optimal means game-wise to fit your standards just confuses the issue.

If all you play is pve, then what do you do with all your iso? You're not using it to level your characters, are you? If you are, you're introducing needless frustration into your life. Since pve scales with your roster level, then not putting any iso into your characters is the best way to win without the frustration of scaling.

What you should consider is that there are 2 parts to this game, pve and pvp. If you choose to do one and not the other, than you are choosing to limit the amount of play you get from this game. I wish there were more "offline" events so you can still stay pve and not get bored, but d3 haven't seen fit to add more yet. Likewise, the pvp only people have long stretches of time where they don't play the game, even before the cool down timers since it wasn't necessary to play the first day of a pvp.

Don't think I'm just picking on you. I get that change is frustrating when it doesn't make things easier or more fun for us. But this is just 1 test run. Maybe this will tell d3 that 3 hours is best, maybe they'll try 4 hours or 6 hours next, who knows? But at least they are trying something. There will always be new things that people don't like, I still hate true healing, but it's still a fun game overall because I play both sides of the game. I hope you try out this pve. I'd like to see how your placement was affected. I know where I usually stand pve-wise and hope this test run makes my placement better

JVReal

I am Zero wrote:

If all you play is pve, then what do you do with all your iso? You're not using it to level your characters, are you? If you are, you're introducing needless frustration into your life. Since pve scales with your roster level, then not putting any iso into your characters is the best way to win without the frustration of scaling.

What you should consider is that there are 2 parts to this game, pve and pvp. If you choose to do one and not the other, than you are choosing to limit the amount of play you get from this game. I wish there were more "offline" events so you can still stay pve and not get bored, but d3 haven't seen fit to add more yet. Likewise, the pvp only people have long stretches of time where they don't play the game, even before the cool down timers since it wasn't necessary to play the first day of a pvp.

Don't think I'm just picking on you. I get that change is frustrating when it doesn't make things easier or more fun for us. But this is just 1 test run. Maybe this will tell d3 that 3 hours is best, maybe they'll try 4 hours or 6 hours next, who knows? But at least they are trying something. There will always be new things that people don't like, I still hate true healing, but it's still a fun game overall because I play both sides of the game. I hope you try out this pve. I'd like to see how your placement was affected. I know where I usually stand pve-wise and hope this test run makes my placement better

Right now, I play PVP only to about 300 points. That's as far as I can go with my 2* roster before I hit teams that are no fun to beat... and forget retaliations, I don't even try fighting anyone with Xforce. I can sometimes push 400, but very seldom. My 3* and 4* all need covers. I play to 300 for the token, and to help as much as I can in my alliance with season scoring (which isn't much, I know). It is fun to play the featured character that I may not have or may not have the featured ability... but that fun only lasts until I start getting hit and lose more than I can gain (usually between 300-400) it's at that point it becomes no fun, so I jump back to PVE.

I only level the 3* characters that are boosted at the time, and none of them are greater than level 86 I think, even if they have enough covers to push them higher. I'm sitting on 125K Iso, and its growing, because leveling my 3* is not to my benefit as you mentioned. PVE's have been my sole source of 3* covers aside from token pulls. Progression rewards, Placement rewards, and Alliance placement rewards have expanded my 3* teams and I had fun doing it.

I understand it's just one test event... and you know, even if they rotate refresh times like they have been, I can live with that. A 3 hour refresh event, 4 hour refresh event, 6 hour refresh event and an 8 hour refresh event. Everyone gets their style of refresh, the hard part is which type of event to assign to which length of refresh... that could be a whole new topic.

I believe I started in October, so I don't know MPQ before True Healing, don't know Environment tiles or 12 hour refreshes. Thank you for your kind and thought out response.

slidecage

simonsez wrote:

daibar wrote:

Doesn't 8 hours for the final grind allow people to strategize more

There's no strategy to a grind. You just play as much as you can. And when you make the grind longer, aside from the natural health drain, you also increase the likelihood of really bad things happening (ie total wipes).

You also aren't considering that when someone is hitting the nodes every 2.5 hours, they're alleviating the pressure of their final grind. Ie, no health packs required at all. But when everyone can hit the nodes once every 8 hours, the final grind pressure will be far greater. Hell, I've got 8 hours to go in Oscorp, and I could stop now and still get top 10. That will never happen with an 8 hour refresh. I'd be in a score cluster with 6 dozen other people, and the top ranks will go to whoever buys enough health packs to keep their final grind going as long as possible.

and that is why im looking for a new game to play. All this does is help the people who spend REAL CASH in this game. game is becoming nothing more then a PAY TO WIN everyday now.

Unknown

slidecage wrote:

simonsez wrote:

daibar wrote:

Doesn't 8 hours for the final grind allow people to strategize more

There's no strategy to a grind. You just play as much as you can. And when you make the grind longer, aside from the natural health drain, you also increase the likelihood of really bad things happening (ie total wipes).

You also aren't considering that when someone is hitting the nodes every 2.5 hours, they're alleviating the pressure of their final grind. Ie, no health packs required at all. But when everyone can hit the nodes once every 8 hours, the final grind pressure will be far greater. Hell, I've got 8 hours to go in Oscorp, and I could stop now and still get top 10. That will never happen with an 8 hour refresh. I'd be in a score cluster with 6 dozen other people, and the top ranks will go to whoever buys enough health packs to keep their final grind going as long as possible.

and that is why im looking for a new game to play. All this does is help the people who spend REAL CASH in this game. game is becoming nothing more then a PAY TO WIN everyday now.

every change is sweet poison....

brysonian

Ok so with 8 hr refresh times there would only be enough time to work the nodes for rewards 4 to 5 times barely. Would the iso 20 factor be removed for this change. I would be annoyed to wait 8 hours for full points to work for rewards only to get iso 20 and have to wait another 8 hours for possible iso 20 again.

Just did the first node I could at full and what I was just stating here just happened 8 hour wait for iso 20. Hopefully the rest of the nodes will give actual rewards.

7 out of 10 nodes gave me iso 20 this should deffinately not happen if there is an 8 hour turn over rate where full rewards are not likely if all rewards arent given per round of nodes.